September 28, 2026

Madonna did not win Video of the Year at the 2026 MTV Video Music Awards, held September 27 in Los Angeles. Taylor Swift won the award for "The Fate of Ophelia," extending her record for the most Video of the Year wins in VMA history.

Madonna entered the night with a career-high 13 nominations by some counts and led the field of nominees, and she still had a dominant showing overall, winning seven trophies including Artist of the Year, Best Dance and Best Collaboration for "Bring Your Love" with Sabrina Carpenter — her first VMA performance in 23 years. But the top honor for a single video went to Swift, who was nominated nine times and also received the ceremony's first-ever Artist Director Honors, a new award recognizing an artist's broader visual and creative direction.

The community correctly anticipated this outcome, with only 27% expecting Madonna to win Video of the Year. The result meant the two most-nominated artists of the night split the ceremony's two biggest prizes, with Madonna dominating the overall awards count while Swift retained her grip on the specific Video of the Year category she has won more than any other artist.

"Avengers: Endgame," re-released in theaters as "Avengers: Endgame Encore" on September 25, 2026, out-grossed Brad Pitt's new film "Heart of the Beast" over the same opening weekend. The Marvel re-release took in $86 million globally, including $26 million in North America, while "Heart of the Beast" opened to $50.1 million worldwide, with $20 million domestically.

The Endgame re-release's global haul marked the second-highest worldwide rerelease total ever, trailing only 2012's "Titanic 3D." "Heart of the Beast," in which Pitt plays a Special Forces officer stranded in the wilderness with his combat dog, still performed respectably, earning an 87% score on Rotten Tomatoes and an "A-" CinemaScore, but it could not match the built-in fan demand for a seven-year-old blockbuster returning to theaters ahead of the franchise's next chapter.

The community correctly anticipated this outcome, with 64% expecting Endgame to out-gross the new release. The result illustrated the growing box-office strategy of studios re-releasing beloved franchise films to fill release calendars and build anticipation, with Marvel's Endgame return outperforming not just Pitt's film but also Robert Pattinson's "Primetime," which opened the same weekend.

The Chicago White Sox made the playoffs when the 2026 regular season ended, clinching a wild-card berth on September 24 with a 9-1 win over the Kansas City Royals. The berth secured Chicago's first postseason appearance since 2021.

The achievement was historic: no team in MLB history had previously reached the playoffs immediately after two straight 100-loss seasons, and the White Sox pulled it off with games to spare, following consecutive 100-plus-loss campaigns. Chicago claimed the last of the American League's three wild-card spots and was set to face the Houston Astros, winners of the AL West, in the opening round of the postseason.

The community correctly anticipated this outcome, with 80% expecting the White Sox to make the playoffs. The turnaround capped a rapid rebuild for a franchise that had been one of the sport's worst teams for two consecutive years, and it was framed by national baseball coverage as one of 2026's most notable surprises, with some analysts suggesting the young roster's pitching depth and improved offense gave it a real chance to advance deep into October.

The International team did not reach 15½ points at the 2026 Presidents Cup. Team USA won the event 17-13 at Medinah Country Club on September 27, completing the largest final-day comeback in the competition's history.

The Internationals had built a 10½-7½ lead entering Sunday's singles matches, putting them within reach of ending a drought stretching back through 15 previous editions, in which they had won the Presidents Cup only once. But the U.S. team dominated the final day, taking 9½ of a possible 12 points in singles to erase the deficit and pull away to a four-point win. Only Tom Kim and Sungjae Im won their singles matches for the Internationals, while Nick Taylor halved his match against Russell Henley; the rest of the American lineup overwhelmed the International side.

The community was closely split on this outcome, with 46% expecting the Internationals to reach the 15½-point threshold, reflecting how competitive the team looked heading into the final day. The Sunday collapse extended the Internationals' long losing streak in the event and underscored how quickly a lead built over four days of team play can evaporate against a deep U.S. singles lineup.

Russia struck Kyiv before September 28, 2026, as the war's aerial exchanges escalated through late September. Russian drone and missile attacks hit the Kyiv region overnight and into the following days, killing multiple civilians, including children, according to Ukrainian officials.

The strikes came in the wake of Ukraine's largest drone attack of the war on Moscow, launched September 20, which set fire to the Gazpromneft-Moscow oil refinery and, according to Moscow's mayor, involved more than 1,600 drones intercepted across Russia, with roughly 450 aimed at the capital. Russian officials reported deaths in the Moscow strikes as well. Russia's retaliatory attacks on Kyiv continued in the following days, with strikes hitting the capital and causing casualties as both sides escalated long-range drone and missile campaigns against each other's infrastructure and population centers.

The community correctly anticipated this outcome, with 70% expecting a Russian strike on Kyiv within the window. The exchange reflected an intensifying pattern through September 2026, in which Ukraine's deepest strikes yet into Russian territory were consistently met with retaliatory Russian barrages on Ukrainian cities, even as diplomatic efforts to broker a ceasefire between Washington, Moscow and Kyiv continued in parallel without a breakthrough.

Venezuela's acting president, Delcy Rodríguez, met with President Trump in New York on September 22, 2026, on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly. The two spoke for roughly 15 minutes at a reception at the Lotte New York Palace hotel, marking their first face-to-face meeting.

Rodríguez took over Venezuela's government after a U.S. military operation in January 2026 captured longtime leader Nicolás Maduro and brought him to the United States to face drug-trafficking charges. She had been Maduro's vice president. The White House had said the previous week that a meeting was planned, and it followed an agreement announced in August giving the United States a stake in Venezuela's oil reserves. During their exchange, Trump pressed Rodríguez on the need for Venezuela to hold elections.

The community underestimated this outcome, with only 39% expecting the meeting to happen by September 27, reflecting uncertainty over whether the informal, sideline nature of the encounter would materialize as a real Trump-Rodríguez meeting. The photo of the two leaders together drew criticism from some Republican lawmakers, including Sen. Rick Scott and Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, who argued that engaging directly with a Maduro-era official undercut U.S. positioning on Venezuela's political transition.

The Texas Rangers did not hold on to win the AL West. The Houston Astros clinched the division on the final day of the 2026 regular season, September 27, by beating the Athletics, while Texas lost to the Minnesota Twins to fall short.

Both teams entered the finale essentially even, with Houston and Texas having spent the season's last week tied atop the division at 78-78. The Rangers needed a win over Minnesota plus an Astros loss to force a tiebreaker; instead, Texas fell to the Twins and Houston finished off the Athletics, clinching outright. The Astros closed the season at 81-81, and Texas ended at 80-82, meaning the division was decided by Houston's better head-to-head or divisional tiebreaker positioning rather than by either team playing above .500 down the stretch.

The community overwhelmingly expected Texas to hold on, with 93% predicting a Rangers win of the division, making this one of the day's bigger upsets relative to community expectations. The result also meant the AL West would be won by a team finishing at or below .500, a rare outcome that underscored how competitive — and mediocre, by playoff standards — the division was in 2026.

The Dallas Cowboys did not win the NFL's first game in Rio de Janeiro. The Baltimore Ravens beat Dallas 34-31 at the Maracanã on September 27, 2026, with kicker Tyler Loop hitting a walk-off 56-yard field goal as time expired.

Dallas had tied the score in the final seconds, but Baltimore answered immediately: quarterback Lamar Jackson connected with Zay Flowers for a 27-yard gain with one second left, setting up Loop's game-winning kick. Both teams entered the matchup at 1-1, and the back-and-forth finish turned what had been a competitive but unremarkable early-season game into one of the more dramatic finishes of the young NFL season.

The community leaned only slightly toward Dallas, with 46% expecting a Cowboys win, reflecting the closeness of the matchup on paper between two similarly positioned teams. The game was part of the NFL's continued international expansion, marking the league's first regular-season contest in Brazil, and it drew additional attention for concerns about the Maracanã's field conditions ahead of kickoff, concerns that ultimately did not affect the outcome of a game decided by a last-second kick.

Bitcoin did not close above $90,000 by September 27, 2026. The cryptocurrency topped $86,000 on September 21, an eight-month high, then pulled back over the following days, trading in the mid-$80,000s rather than continuing to climb toward the $90,000 mark.

Bitcoin had rallied sharply from below $76,000 in mid-September on renewed institutional demand through spot Bitcoin ETFs, but the advance stalled as investors weighed higher U.S. Treasury yields and took profits near the $85,000-$87,000 range. By September 26, bitcoin was trading near $84,000, having retreated from an intraweek high above $87,000, with market commentary describing resistance around that level rather than a clean breakout toward $90,000.

The community correctly anticipated this outcome, with only 9% expecting bitcoin to close above $90,000 by the deadline, reflecting broad skepticism that the rally would extend that far in less than a week. The episode fit a broader 2026 pattern of bitcoin swinging sharply within wide bands — sinking below $76,000 in mid-September before its rebound — as traders continued debating whether the asset was headed toward six-figure territory or due for another pullback.

The Chicago Cubs did not finish as the National League's top wild card. The San Diego Padres claimed that spot instead, clinching it by beating the Arizona Diamondbacks late in the final weekend of the regular season, which combined with a Philadelphia Phillies loss to Tampa Bay to lock the Cubs into the second wild-card position.

Entering the stretch run, Chicago, Philadelphia and San Diego were tied at 85-69 with eight games remaining, setting up a tight three-way race for the top wild-card seed and the extra rest and home-field advantage that comes with it. The Padres pulled ahead over the season's final days, finishing as the No. 4 seed and earning the right to host the Cubs, the No. 5 seed, in a best-of-three wild-card series that began September 29 in San Diego. The Phillies took the No. 6 seed and drew the Atlanta Braves.

The community split roughly evenly on this outcome, with 50% expecting the Cubs to finish first among the wild-card contenders. Instead, the race came down to the regular season's final games, with San Diego's late surge deciding which of the three co-leaders would host and which would travel for the opening round of the playoffs.

Madonna did not win Video of the Year at the 2026 MTV Video Music Awards, held September 27 in Los Angeles. Taylor Swift won the award instead, for "The Fate of Ophelia," extending her record as the most-decorated artist in the category's history.

Madonna led the field with 11 nominations entering the show and still had a big night, winning seven awards total, including Artist of the Year, Best Dance and Best Collaboration for "Bring Your Love" with Sabrina Carpenter, while performing at the VMAs for the first time in 23 years. But Video of the Year, the ceremony's top honor for a single music video, went to Swift, who also received the show's inaugural Artist Director Honors recognizing her broader creative work.

The community correctly anticipated this outcome, with only 27% expecting Madonna to win Video of the Year. The split outcome — Madonna claiming the overall Artist of the Year title while Swift took the top video honor — meant the night's two most-nominated stars each left with a marquee award, rather than one dominating both top categories.

Taylor Swift did not win Artist of the Year at the 2026 MTV Video Music Awards, held September 27 in Los Angeles. Madonna won the award instead, part of a night in which she took home seven trophies overall, including Best Dance and Best Collaboration for "Bring Your Love" with Sabrina Carpenter.

Swift entered the ceremony with nine nominations and did not go home empty-handed: she won Video of the Year for "The Fate of Ophelia" and received the show's first-ever Artist Director Honors, a new career-recognition award. But the marquee Artist of the Year prize, which factors in a nominee's overall impact across video, chart performance and audience engagement for the eligibility period, went to Madonna, who was marking her first VMA performance in 23 years.

The community correctly anticipated this outcome, with only 27% expecting Swift to win Artist of the Year. Madonna's dominant night — anchored by her return to the VMA stage after more than two decades away — overshadowed Swift's nomination haul and set the tone for a ceremony that split its top honors between the two artists rather than crowning one clear victor.

Bears quarterback Caleb Williams did not start against the Philadelphia Eagles in Week 3 on September 28, 2026. Chicago ruled him out and started Case Keenum instead, with Tyson Bagent also available as a backup option.

Williams was hurt during Chicago's 9-3 loss to the Minnesota Vikings in Week 2, when he suffered a hamstring injury that was later diagnosed as a Grade 2 strain. Team and league reporting placed his likely return timeline at three to four weeks, though the Bears opted not to place him on injured reserve, suggesting some hope he could return sooner. Keenum's start against the Eagles was his first regular-season appearance since 2023.

The community largely anticipated this outcome, with only 23% expecting Williams to play, consistent with reporting throughout the week that labeled him week-to-week and increasingly unlikely to suit up. The injury forced Chicago into an unplanned quarterback change for a divisional-style test against Philadelphia, complicating the Bears' offensive plans just two games into the season and raising questions about how long the team could remain competitive without its starter.

The five networks that make up the White House television pool — ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox and NBC — resumed pool coverage of President Trump on September 25, 2026, after CNN's access to the White House grounds was restored. The suspension began on September 18, when Trump barred CNN, along with Politico and MS NOW, from the complex over its reporting, prompting the pool's five members to jointly halt coverage in solidarity, arguing that "no administration should restrict a news organization because it objects to its reporting."

Coverage resumed after a federal judge ruled that the White House had violated the barred outlets' due process rights and ordered their credentials restored, following a lawsuit filed by CNN, Politico and MS NOW. Once CNN regained physical access, the pool — which rotates reporters and photographers to cover the president in tight spaces like the Oval Office and Air Force One — resumed its normal rotation on Trump's events.

The community predicted this outcome correctly, with 62% expecting the networks to resume coverage by September 28. The episode marked one of the more unified pushbacks by major broadcast and cable outlets against White House press restrictions in recent years, underscoring how quickly a credentialing dispute escalated into a court fight over press access.